right, when I was beset by that sort of grown-up fractiousness that
wants to be petted and put to bed, and bidden to lie still like a
tired child.

Winter had set in in downright earnest, and in those cold dark
mornings early rising seemed an affront to the understanding, and a
snare to be avoided by all right-minded persons; yet notwithstanding
all that, a perverse, fidgety notion of duty drove me with a scourge
of mental thorns from my warm bed. For I was young and healthy, and
why should I lie there while Deborah and Martha broke the ice in
their pitchers, and came downstairs with rasped red faces and
acidulated tempers? I was thankful not to do likewise, to know I
should hear in a few minutes a surly tap at the door, with the little
hot-water can put down with protesting evidence. Even then it was
hard work to flesh and blood, with no dewy lawn, no bird music now to
swell my morning's devotion with tiny chorus of praise; only a hard
frozen up world, with a trickle of meager sunshine running through it.

But my hardest work was with Dot; he used to argue drowsily with me
while I stood shivering and awaiting his pleasure. Why did I not go
down to the fire if I were cold? He was not going to get up in the
middle of the night to please any one; never mind the robins--of
which I reminded him gently--he wished he were a robin too, and could
get up and go to bed with a neat little feather bed tacked to his
skin--nice, cosy little fellows; and then he would draw the
bedclothes round his thin little shoulders, and try to maintain his
position.

He quite whimpered on the morning in question, when I lifted him out
bodily--such a miserable Dot, looking like a starved dove in his